A Selective Timeline of Art Censorship in the U.S.A.: 1997

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The U.S. Supreme Court declares CDA unconstitutional. The Court rules that attempting to regulate the Internet to prevent children's access to "indecent" or "patently offensive" materials "places an unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech." The court states that the Internet is to be judged by the most stringent First Amendment standards and rules.

  

 
Andy Cox, Citybank posters    

Worried about trademark infringement, San Francisco State University president Robert Corrigan orders the removal of a series of posters by SFSU student Andy Cox lampooning Citibank's "In Your Dreams" billboard campaign.

 
Kara Walker, Cut paper and adhesive on wall.  

Kara Walker, Camptown Ladies, detail, 1998. Cutpaper and adhesive on wall. Overall size 9 x 67 feet.

African-American artist, Betye Saar, initiates a letter-writing campaign protesting Kara Walker's paper cutouts, Presenting Negro Scenes Drawn Upon My Passage through the South and Reconfigured for the Benefit of Enlightened Audiences Wherever Such May be Found, by Myself, Missus K.E.B. Walker, Colored, 1997. Tensions are finally aired at a symposium at Harvard addressing the sensitive issue of the recycling and reframing of racially stereotypical images in contemporary culture.

Four nude sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including The Kiss, are pulled from a traveling exhibit shown at Brigham Young University in Utah.

The San Antonio City Council eliminates all city funding to the Esperanza center, a community arts organization, following a campaign that characterized Esperanza as "pro-homosexual," "pro-abortion" and anti-"family values." In May 2001, Judge Orlando Garcia rules that the City of San Antonio had violated the First Amendment rights of the Esperanza Center. He finds that Esperanza was penalized for expressing its viewpoint, namely the promotion of social and economic justice-through its arts program.

The Anchorage, AL Assembly strips the Out North Contemporary Art House of municipal funds for failing to produce only art that is "strictly mainstream...that you would take your whole family to."

Jock Sturges, C.,Paris

Bookstores, particularly Barnes & Noble and Borders, receive protests against Jock Sturges' books with photos of nude minors. In at least 20 locations protestors enter the stores and vandalize copies of the books. Barnes & Noble is indicted in Alabama and Tennessee on "harmful to minors" charges for selling books by Sturges and photographer David Hamilton.

Videos of the Academy Award-winning film, The Tin Drum, are seized by Oklahoma City police under pressure from Oklahomans for Children and Families (OCAF). Police claim the film violates the state's child pornography law.

Planet Comics and Science Fiction Store in Oklahoma City closes after two years of harassment resulting from charges against the owners for trafficking, selling and displaying "obscene" comic books. The police raid on the store and subsequent eviction by the landlord, on the complaint of a member of the Christian Coalition in conjunction with OCAF, result in plummeting sales when customers could not find its new location.